The Pride Trilogy: Kyle Callahan 1-3 (21 page)

“I have to head to the studio,” he said, letting out a deep sigh.

“I thought you loved your job,” said Kate, misreading the sound.

“Oh, the sigh, no, that was for the show. The people. The nakedness of it all. My mother’s coming from Chicago, Danny’s parents from Queens, our friend Detective Linda from New Hope, it’s too much.”

“You’ll be fine. And trust me, you’ll want more. The limelight can be intoxicating. Just don’t become addicted.”

Kyle hugged his friend and mentor, for Kate Pride had become both, with her encouragement and her insistence that Kyle take himself seriously as an artist. He was thinking how lucky he was to have Danny, his mother, Kate, so many supportive people in his life, when he noticed a man across the street in front of Breadwinner’s, staring at them. “Who’s that?”

But as quickly as Kate released the hug and turned to the window, the man was gone. “Who’s who?” she said.

“Nobody, really. Just someone I thought I recognized.” He tried to think of where he would have seen the man, but nothing clicked and he let it go. “Speaking of recognizing someone, it’s terrible about Devin, I saw it on the news.”

Kate’s smile fell. “Yes,” she said. “Horrible. No one would want to hurt Devin intentionally, he was a sweetheart. All that rough and tumble, it was just attitude. The guy was a creampuff. It had to be the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I’m not so sure,” Kyle said.

“Why’s that?”

“Something keeps nagging at me, another death, but I can’t remember it. We’ll talk about it later, maybe you can help me jog it loose. I have to be at the office ten minutes ago. Imogene’s one virtue is punctuality.”

They hugged a last time, and Kyle wondered, as he breathed in Kate’s subtle perfume, if anyone was ever truly in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Chapter 6

Margaret’s Passion

M
argaret’s Passion had
been at 21
^st
Street and 3
^rd
Avenue in the Gramercy Park neighborhood for thirty years. The park itself was only a block away, occupying a private, gated rectangle that was one of the most historic and famous in a city filled with landmarks. The area was once a swamp, and a developer named Samuel Ruggles proposed the idea to drain it and turn it into a park. “Gramercy Square,” as it was first called, is now held in common as one of the city’s two privately owned parks, which the general public must enjoy by gazing at it through wrought iron bars.

Margaret’s restaurant had been a number of businesses over the hundred years the building had stood. Some of its previous incarnations included a pub, a bookstore, and a haberdashery. Margaret and her husband, Gerard, first leased the space, while living in one of the twelve apartments on the three floors above it – theirs being directly over the main dining area and accessible by a staircase they had built in the rear of the kitchen. After ten years of success, the Bowmans bought the building, which became a curse as well as a blessing. Neither of them had any experience as landlords and they finally hired an agent to manage that unwanted part of the business, which left only the restaurant for Margaret to deal with after Gerard died.

The death of Gerard Bowman was a greater blow to Margaret than she had anticipated. The man she had spent nearly fifty years of her life with, first meeting him when they were both still teenagers, had been a lifelong smoker. She was able to get him to stop smoking in their apartment, which led in a way to his untimely death. It was while smoking on the side of the building that he was run over by an impatient livery driver. It had been raining, and he had walked to the curb to stamp out his cigarette butt. Just as he was doing that, a black sedan came flying through the light, determined not to have to wait for the next one. The driver lost control somehow and plowed into Gerard. He died instantly from a head trauma, the one mercy the Bowmans were given from that terrible day.

Margaret wasn’t the same after her husband’s death. Already short and thin, she all but stopped eating, and reached a critical point when her doctor threatened to have her hospitalized. Her hair, naturally graying, became all white, and while she kept it long and tied back with ribbons most of the time, it began to fall out. She was determined to keep Margaret’s Passion open and thriving, but it was something she now forced herself to do. A year after Gerard’s death, Margaret was at a crucial juncture. She was just about to walk way from it all, including New York City, when a man come into her restaurant for lunch. His name was Danny Durban, and Margaret happened to be down in the restaurant that day. He was very cheerful, and the two of them struck up a conversation. He invited her to join him, and she did – something she had refrained from as a business policy all these years. It was one thing to sit for a moment with a dining couple or a family (never alone with a man), but eating with them in your own establishment was simply not done.

She didn’t tell Danny Durban much that day. It was not her style to pour her heart out to anyone but the man who had died outside their restaurant. But he was kind, and inviting, and amusing, and experienced in the very same business. Danny was then working as the day manager at a restaurant on the Upper East Side that was struggling to survive and likely would not. As it turned out, Margaret was looking for a day manager herself: Pierre, the one she’d had for twenty-five years, had retired six months earlier and the new man, Salvatore, was not working out. She had decided to let him go but needed someone to bring in as his replacement. Meeting Danny Durban was a long-needed moment of serendipity.

Two weeks later Danny was working for Margaret, and a relationship that would shape both of their lives was born.

It was less than a ten minute walk from Danny and Kyle’s apartment to Margaret’s and the weather couldn’t be better. While Danny enjoyed California and points west, he couldn’t imagine living without the distinct change of seasons that people east of the Mississippi enjoyed. The East Coast was particularly nice. It didn’t have the kinds of harsh winters you found in Chicago or Minneapolis, yet there was never any question which season you were in; and of the four, only summer made Danny wish he were somewhere else. The heat and smell of summers in Manhattan could be nasty.

Margaret’s Passion had the feel of a restaurant that had been running successfully for three decades. That comfortable, settled feeling was part of its attraction. Like a number of other well-known eateries in Manhattan, it valued its place in the neighborhood, as if it were an old friend who, along with the residents, had weathered good times and bad and managed to survive. There was a large bay window looking out onto 21
^st
Street, through which passersby could see people dining, conversing, and eating some of the best food in the city. The entry was narrow, reminiscent of its pub days, and just inside was the lectern where the maître d’ greeted guests. It was dark wood, matching the rest of the wood in the restaurant’s interior, and – so Margaret claimed – had belonged to the church in Poughkeepsie where her parents’ married hastily just before her father went off to combat in World War I.

Chloe was on duty today when Danny got there late after taking Smelly home from the vet. She was the senior day waitress and a real pro, making each diner feel as if they were the center of her attention, and for it pocketing tips that kept her living in style.

Danny waved good morning to Trebor, the bartender, who was behind the long oak bar serving a few early customers. Trebor was the youngest of the people working in the restaurant, aside from some of the kitchen staff, and had been with Margaret’s for four years now. Danny had poached him from one of Linus Hern’s restaurants. Linus was Danny’s nemesis, and the restaurateurs’ version of a vulture capitalist: he got restaurants off the ground, then sold them for a profit and quickly vanished, leaving nearly all of the buyers bankrupt a year later with “Closed for Renovations” signs in their windows, which meant they were never coming back. Danny knew the future did not look good for Trebor and offered him a job, telling him as discreetly as possible that the restaurant he was working in, having been sold by Hern, was in all probability doomed. It was only after Trebor started at Margaret’s Passion that Danny discovered it was Robert spelled backward. Clever boy.

Chloe made a cup of coffee for Danny, a routine she had that he had not discouraged, and set it on the table closest to the kitchen. That was where the two of them would usually have coffee and go over details for the day. The menu didn’t change, but there was a checklist Danny adhered to faithfully. It was also their time for some casual conversation before the lunch crowd showed up.

Chloe took a seat, stirring cream into her coffee. “He was back this morning,” she said. “Her new lawyer. And he wasn’t alone.”

Margaret’s longtime lawyer, a man named Evan Evans who had been with her since she and Gerard opened the restaurant, had passed away nine months ago at the age of eighty-six. The old gentleman, whom Danny had always found to be as mischievous as he was gracious, had been a weekly figure there for many years. He would come in for lunch every Thursday, eat alone, then head upstairs to visit with Margaret. He was as much a companion for a woman whose companions had nearly all died as he was an attorney. At that age the wise tend to make preparations, and he had suggested Margaret hire a young lawyer named Claude Petrie – the man who, Chloe had just explained, had come in again to see Margaret, this time with two other men.

Claude bothered Danny, though he couldn’t say why. He was not much taller than Danny, but considerably heavier. He could always be found in a suit and tie, with a briefcase in his hand, although Danny had the feeling it was for effect and probably empty. Claude seemed to need people to think he was very busy, and of late that might be true: he had been to see Margaret several times the last month, never for very long. Unlike the man who had recommended him, Claude did not dally, did not sit for a leisurely lunch on the house, and spoke little to anyone, including Danny.

“Something’s up,” Danny said to Chloe. She nodded, having concluded the same thing.

“Estate stuff?” she said. Margaret was now an octogenarian and likely sensing her own mortality these days.

“I’ll find a way to ask her,” Danny said, a dark mood starting to descend. He couldn’t imagine life without Margaret, and the thought of it reminded him his own parents were getting old. Once they were gone, he and Kyle were next in line. That’s the way it went in the human carnival.

Fortunately customers began to arrive, pushing thoughts of funerals and grieving periods out of his mind as he rose to greet them with a smile. Ever pleasant, ever present. Just another lunch Margaret’s Passion.

Chapter 7

Hotel Exeter, Hell’s Kitchen

T
he reporters had
moved onto another story by Monday afternoon. New York City had been cleaned up over the last twenty years, but it was still the nation’s largest city, with plenty of crime stories to shock its jaded citizens. Kieran didn’t care; he had watched the same reports of the murder he had committed enough times to be bored by them. Brutally stabbed, sixteen times, no leads, call this hotline, blah blah blah. He was just waiting for them to say a reward had been posted, contingent on his capture and conviction, and they could check off all their little murder story boxes and move on.

Kieran wasn’t interested in watching television, anyway. He was interested in the man in Philadelphia who had answered his ManCatch ad. He had used one of the computers at the internet café on 9
^th
Avenue, which was really just another overpriced, pretentious coffee shop with mouse turds in the muffins and a couple bolted-down laptops customers could use for .50 cents a minute if they didn’t bring their own.

ManCatch.com was a symptom of a society gone digitally wrong, where no one really had to meet anyone unless there was an exchange to their mutual benefit, usually of bodily fluids, and where everyone could pretend to be someone else. That’s what he’d done, placing an ad on the Philly page of the website, posing as exactly the kind of young man Richard Morninglight would notice immediately: barely legal, with an aw-shucks tone in his message they both knew was a put-on. Roles, games, players. For thirty or so words he had played the part of a young college student trying to pay the bills, for which he would gladly be an escort, no harm in that, and if anything untoward happened, well, he was a willing student of experience. He knew this is what Morninglight enjoyed, and sure enough, not long after the artist arrived in Philadelphia for a show that would take his career several steps up the ladder, he responded to Kieran in New York, not knowing where he was. Among the Internet’s dubious advantages was that you could be anyone, and anywhere.
Hi, Kevin
, Morninglight wrote.
I’m at the Hamilton Inn the next few nights for a convention
(of course he wouldn’t tell the truth)
and would love to help out with the cost of those college books! Email me back and let’s see what we can do.

What they could do, it turned out, was arrange for Kieran, posing as Kevin the college student, to arrive at Richard Morninglight’s hotel that night. As soon as Morninglight knew he was downstairs, he would leave his door unlocked, slip naked into his bed as if he were sleeping, and wait with every cell of his body tingling in anticipation.

He probably won’t even open his eyes, Kieran thought as he gathered his Latex gloves, the guitar strings he’d bought that morning, and a change of clothes in case things got messy. Morninglight will think the man climbing into bed on top of him is there at his pleasure, just another pretend college student making ends meet. But no, Richard, he thought. The pleasure will all be mine.

He zipped up the gym bag, grabbed his brand new hoodie from the bed, the one with “I Love NY” stenciled on it that he picked up next to the liquor store, took one last look around a room he would soon be checking out of forever, and headed to the bus terminal for the ride to Philly.